


we found love in a hopeless place

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Series: lou does the kink bingo 2020 [25]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cages, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hand Jobs, Kree Politics, Restraints, Slave Trade, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Vaginal Sex, neither between kasinara tho, prince!kasius, rebel leader!sinara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Prince Kasius has been on the run for most of his life. His return from exile is not what he'd ever have imagined, especially not when rebel leader Sinara makes him her own.
Relationships: Kasius/Sinara (Marvel)
Series: lou does the kink bingo 2020 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591909
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: MCU Kink Bingo Round 4





	we found love in a hopeless place

Kasius stood and stared straight ahead, doing his best to ignore the jeering around him, the shackles on his wrists and ankles, the bars doing nothing to hide him from the hungry, scornful, terrifying leers of those passing by and crowding around.

There had been another on the throne in the wake of his father’s death all those years ago, a new emperor to hate while Kasius had been spirited away and hidden in exile after exile, always on the run, from one place to the next, each more squalid as time went on. But that usurper was dead now too, Hala firmly in rebel hands, and Kasius unfortunately was as well. He was not considered a threat that needed eliminating, not when he had spent longer on the run than he had ever been a prince, but he was still not someone who could just be left to lead his life, nameless and coinless but safe.

No, he was stripped of titles and fortunes before he was old enough to fully understand them, and now he was stripped of all else - his home, small as it had been, his freedom, his clothes. His protector, Krenyk, the closest thing to a father he could remember.

He pushed that thought away. The tears stinging at the corners of his eyes would do him no favours. He could already hear all the crude suggestions from the crowd what they’d do to him if they bought him.

The bidding was already going strong, the auctioneer only driving the raucous laughter higher.

“Get him out of that!”someone in the crowd demanded.

He knew they didn’t mean the cage. They meant the loincloth, the last thing giving him even an illusion of dignity.

The auctioneer fumbled with the lock but before he could do more than open the cage door, a woman made her way to the front of the crowd and up onto the small stage Kasius was being presented on.

“I’ll take him,”she said.

Kasius didn’t know whether he ought to look at her or avoid doing so, so he glanced at her and then quickly averted his eyes. He recognised her. He and Krenyk had kept up with the goings-on of the kingdom in hopes of staying ahead of things, so of course he knew the faces of all those on the rebels’ ruling council. There was something else about Sinara, though. Something not quite in his grasp, a recognition that went deeper, that had been with him when he’d first seen the grainy image of her at the storming of the capital.

“What, you’re buying him unseen?”the auctioneer jested.

Sinara’s gaze dropped to Kasius’ loincloth and then went back to the auctioneer. Her tone was bored, her expression blank.“What can I say? I like surprises.”

And just like that, the bidding was over.

Sinara watched, her lips pressed into a thin line, as the auctioneer looped a leash through the cuffs on his wrists and ankles. She took it without comment.

“His clothes?”she asked instead.

“A few were recovered, aye.” The auctioneer gestured to a group of young teens nearby.“My assistants will bring everything along with the cage.”

She accepted that with a nod and gestured for Kasius to come with her. The leash was in her hand. She did not tug on it.

He followed her into chambers in a castle that had been his home, once upon a time.

“We’re near the library,”he burst out and then quickly fixed his gaze on the ground by her feet when she turned to look at him.

She didn’t chastise him. She didn’t reply at all. She just kept walking.

The quarters were grand; he glanced around covertly, heart hammering. There was no telling what she was planning with him. Some suggestions on the market had involved his very, very slow death.

She reached into her pocket and Kasius flinched.

Sinara tilted her head, maybe mockingly, maybe in question, and showed him the key she’d produced. She unlocked and discarded his cuffs, then jerked her head towards another door.

He walked over and found himself in the bathroom.

When he stopped in the doorway to give her a confused look, Sinara nudged at his shoulder to make him move into the room and to the shower.

“There’s soap on the shelf,”she said.“You can use the grey towel. You have five minutes before I’ll be forced to check up on you.” She typed something into her comms, presumably setting a timer, and put it on the edge of the sink.“There’s no reason to try and kill yourself, and there’s nothing in here to help you anyway.”

And just liked that, she turned and left the room, even pulling the door shut behind herself.

He was frozen in confusion for a few seconds but then he hastily rid himself of the loincloth and stepped into the shower. The water was wonderfully warm, the pressure just right. The soap smelled vaguely of honey. It felt so good to be warm, to be clean, he almost let the tears fall that he had been swallowing down for the three weeks of his capture.

But if he started crying now, he’d never stop. So he just held his face into the spray of water and let those droplets cascade down his cheeks.

He’d only just finished toweling off when the timer started beeping. There was a knock on the door and Kasius managed to wrap the towel around his hips before Sinara opened the door.

She took her comms and instead set a pile of clothes down.“Your stuff’s arrived.”

With that she left him to get dressed; he did so quickly and then followed her into the living area, and then the bedroom. He waited in the doorway, unsure if he’d been meant to follow her at all.

The cage had been brought, too, sitting by her bed on its side with a thin mattress inside. He’d slept like that the last few weeks. It had not gotten any less uncomfortable, neither physically nor emotionally.

“How’s your wrists?”Sinara asked.

He looked down at the skin, rubbed raw and hurting, and shrugged.

Sinara rolled her eyes. She rummaged around in a drawer and then handed him a container of healing gel. She watched him until he started applying it, then went to the sofa and started pulling cushions off it.

Kasius watched her in confusion as she put them down in the cage, making sure to even them out until they had the appearance of a second mattress, then adding one more and a blanket that looked so soft he shuddered with anticipation.

“I can’t trust you wandering about at night,”she said matter-of-factly. Then she looked at him strangely, eyes utterly unreadable but not the emotionless stare of the marketplace.“I’m Sinara, by the way.”

“I know,”Kasius said. At her bewildered look he added,“I followed the broadcasts as much as I could.”

“Of course.” She sounded almost disappointed.“Don’t forget about your ankles.”

He opted to ignore her odd tone; there was nothing he could do about it - or about anything, actually - anyway. So he just rubbed the healing gel onto his abused skin and waited for her to speak again.

She did not. She was flicking through some documents on her comms, acting as if he weren’t even present.

“Why am I here?”Kasius finally burst out when he couldn’t take the silence any longer.

Sinara cocked her head to the side.“I bought you.”

His hands clenched into fists at that; he forced himself to relax again.“Yes, but why?”

“Good scribes are hard to come by,”she said.“You can read and write, can’t you?”

“Of course,”Kasius said. He chewed on his lower lip, considering his options for a few seconds, but then pressed on.“Surely there’s cheaper scribes?”

She very nearly smiled at that, he could have sworn on it.

“None that are princes.” She shrugged.“Besides, everyone has their own agencies. There’s no one you can run to with my secrets.”

“I can’t run anywhere,”he pointed out.

This time she did smile. Her eyes looked even more golden when she did, somehow.“Exactly.”

She was confusing. Maybe that ought to unnerve him. But she gave him a warm meal, the same as hers, and he got to eat it sitting at the table.

He didn’t even much mind curling up in his cage that night, with his clean pillows, soft blanket, and freshly washed body.

He wasn’t cold for the first time in a long while, or otherwise uncomfortable, or even scared.

Whatever she planned with him, it could not be as bad as the notions floating around the market. And if it was, he’d get a good’s night sleep out of it first.

* * *

Sinara was always awake at the crack of the dawn, fully used to being awake before everyone but fellow former soldiers-turned-rebels, even her captive prince, whose sleeping patterns were quite strange.

It was the fourth night of him sleeping in the cage by her bed - a strange feeling, having him there, but necessary. He could not be trusted not to do something stupid if given free reign. The other council leaders, everyone else in the castle, really, could not be trusted not to do something vile to him if they found him alone.

Maybe it was that thought that had sent him the nightmare that made him whimper and trash around, loud enough to wake her up.

After a moment of disorientation, she crawled to the foot of the bed and opened a partition of the cage to reach in and shake Kasius’ shoulder.

He gasped and tried to get away from her. She quickly pulled her hand back.

“It’s just a nightmare,”she whispered.

Except it was quite possible that she was his worst nightmare. Still, something in the way he looked at her, vulnerable and wide-eyed, made her reach out again, fingers brushing his cheek.

He leaned into the touch.

“It’s okay,”she said, stroking his hair out of his face.“It was a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

She was only a little surprised when he started crying instead; he lay down anyway, tears streaming down his face and into the pillow she’d given him so he could feel a little less like cattle.

She kept petting his hair, making vague soothing sounds as she did it, stroking and stroking and humming, until he stopped crying, until he fell asleep, and then a while longer.

Her fingers remained tangled in his hair when she fell back asleep herself. She moved her pillow to that end of the bed the next morning.

His nightmares were quickly stemmed with her gentle fingers.

She was not used to touching someone so softly. By his little whimpers, he was no more used to being touched this way.

* * *

Kasius was reading yet another book to Sinara, who was sitting opposite him with a steaming mug of soup. Its twin sat on the little table next to him, waiting for a good spot to pause in the story.

He was more than a little suspicious about her alleged need for a scribe and reader but he found himself enjoying it. He was fairly sure that she very much knew how to read, though.

He was allowed to accompany her to the library to pick books. She didn’t look at the titles like she couldn’t understand them.

Bringing it up would have been idiotic. There was no point in ruining something that was as good as his life could get just for stupid questions. Like the question if she also felt like she ought to remember him.

Being her entertainment wasn’t the worst fate that could have befallen him, not anywhere close to it. He knew it well. He had heard them in the market.

Some nights though, when he woke with her fingers in his hair and pretended to still be asleep so she would keep going, he thought that he would not have minded if she made him her entertainment in some baser ways.

* * *

“Kasius, are you awake?”Sinara whispered.

He did not answer, going on with his slow and even breathing. If she thought he was asleep, she might stroke his hair again, the way she usually did only after nightmares. But those had gotten less frequent and he did not want her touches to follow suit.

She did not reach for him, even though he didn’t confirm he was awake.

The rustle of fabric gave him pause and then the small, almost suppressed groan made his eyes widen. She had made sure - or thought she had, anyway - that he was asleep for secret touches, just not the ones he had hoped for.

She kept close watch on him throughout the day; he only had his time in the bathroom to himself, and thus the same went for her.

He stuck to showering and the like. He’d barely even entertained the notion of pleasuring himself with what little time he usually got alone.

He had not considered that Sinara had just as little privacy.

It was too late to say something by the time he’d understood why she had checked if he was asleep. And so he lay there, listening to her heavy breathing, her soft moans, the sounds of her movements, drinking it all in.

His cock was hard and he wanted nothing more than to stroke it in time with Sinara’s whimpers, but he had no way of discreetly cleaning up. Listening to her without relief for himself was a sort of exquisite torture.

* * *

“Can I trust you out of the cage?”Sinara heard herself asking.

She felt sick to her stomach every time she had to close the bars on him but there were wagging tongues and spying eyes everywhere, and besides, he had no reason not to want to kill her.

“Of course,”he promised.

As if any sane person would give any other answer. He must have been more sick of that cage than she was of making him sleep in it.

She considered her options and then sighed. They hadn’t rebelled to keep the practice of keeping slaves, and Kasius was just that, no matter how everyone tried to play things off as him being spoils of war.

“I’ll give you a chance to sleep in the bed,”she said, ignoring his widening eyes and adding,“One wrong move and you’re back in the cage.”

She tethered one of his arms to the headboard, with a cloth wrapped cuff to prevent injury, just for the sake of appearances and for her own peace of mind. Not because she was scared of him. Because she was scared of how much she wanted him to want to be in her bed, and not because he wanted out of the cage.

They did not touch, laying there with a few inches between them, yet she could feel the warmth of his body keenly.

* * *

“May I ask a strategy question?”Kasius asked, frowning over the Malech board set between them.

She cocked her head to the side with a smirk.“I’m fairly sure that would be cheating.”

He laughed. It was a nice sound. She heard it more and more these days.

“How did you take the castle?”he asked.

She considered this for a while before answering.

He moved one of his pieces and shook his head with a small smile when she took it in her next turn. He never minded losing, so long as it was a good game. She liked that about him.

“The tunnels for the staff,”she said.

Kasius’ head snapped up, the Malech pieces forgotten. His tongue darted out to wet his lips.

She stared back at him, not daring to interrupt the moment.

“So that was you,”he said. It was not a question.

“I didn’t think you remembered,”she said.

“I wasn’t sure I did.” Kasius shook his head with a wry smile.“Krenyk thought I had invented you. The girl who showed me how to get out of the castle and disappeared. I started to think he was right, to be honest. Sounds too good to be true. Like from a fairytale, I suppose. My mysterious saviour.”

Her tummy fluttered in a way she ought to ignore.

“You might need to reassess that title,”she said.

“No, I think not,”he said. He moved another piece.“Any more clever strategies, mystery saviour?”

“Many,”she quipped, and moved her own piece.

She’d lose the round, she could tell already.

She didn’t mind.

* * *

Kasius had rolled onto his side in his sleep at some point and Sinara had shifted into him. They both went from half asleep to wide awake when she moved just a fraction and found herself with her ass pressed against his hard cock.

“I’m sorry,”he spluttered. He would have fled in embarrassment but his hand was fastened to the headboard as usual.

Sinara rolled over to face him.“It’s fine. Not like I gave you much of a chance to take care of that type of thing.” She bit her lower lip, considering him, gaze dropping to the bulge in his pants and moving back up to his face slowly.“I could let you into the bathroom longer, I think I can trust you by now. Or-”

She broke off and shook her head.

He couldn’t help but notice her pebbled nipples pressed against her thin tank top.

“Or?”he pressed.

Her cheeks flushed ever so slightly. It was gorgeous, as everything about her.

“Well, if you want, I could-”

“Yes,”he said before she even could finish the offer.

He was embarrassingly eager, he knew that.

It was hard to care with the prospect of her touching him. The feel of her fingers combing through his hair, nails sometimes playfully scraping his scalp, was so familiar by now, he could easily imagine how those fingers would feel around his cock. Fuck, he had imagined it dozens of times by now.

He had never dared to hope that she might actually do it. She stroked his chest first, slowly teasing down and across his stomach, then freeing his cock. She made a low sound of appreciation at the back of her throat as his cock lay in her hand; it twitched in response and she let out a husky chuckle, beginning to stroke him.

She shifted so her breasts were pressed against his chest. She started nibbling at his earlobe, kissing his throat and shoulders and jawline. She did not seem to notice when he turned his face so she could kiss his lips, too, or maybe she chose to ignore it.

He didn’t feel up to asking for clarification with her stroking his cock.

He came hard and almost embarrassingly fast.

“It’s been a while,”he mumbled in apology.

Sinara pressed a kiss to his temple and undid his cuff.“Want to go clean up?”

“Alright,”he said. Her nibbles were still visibly pebbled. He took a chance.“Would you like me to return the favour first?”

Her eyes darkened a little, her hips shifting seemingly without her doing.“You really don’t have to do that.”

“I know,”he assured her.“I’d like to. If you want me to, that is.”

She nodded.

His gaze did not leave hers as he slid a hand into her panties, fingers stroking over her pussy. He groaned at how wet she already was. He took his time anyway, slowly stroking her, testing how she responded to which touches, how much pressure on her clit it needed for her to gasp and squirm. He eventually slid a finger into her, at the same time bowing his head to suck at her nipple through the fabric of her shirt.

Her fingers tangled in his hair in response and she moaned, back arching as he sucked harder, as he carefully bit down.

He pushed another finger into her and started fucking her with them. Her moans were delightful. When he added a third finger and her grasp on his hair tightened, he was already half hard again. His thumb was rubbing firm circles on her clit.

He switched to the other breast, tugging down her tank top and kissing and licking at the soft skin before sucking her nipple into his mouth.

He curled his fingers in her pussy experimentally and she moaned even louder, a slight fluttering in her inner walls. He repeated the motion, at the same time biting her nipple and circling her clit faster.

She came with a gasp of his name and then sank back into the pillows with a satisfied sigh.

They lay there for a few moments in companionable silence.

Kasius did his best to ignore his still hardening cock. She’d already gotten him off once, he did not expect her to do it again.

He most certainly did not expect her to notice and slide down the bed with an almost conspiratory smile to take his cock into her mouth.

At least he managed to last a while longer this time: It wasn’t very easy, not with her touching herself while she sucked his cock and coming herself just after swallowing down his come.

* * *

“Why did you help me?”Kasius asked, a few days later, when the mutual masturbation and occasional oral sex had become almost as much part of their routine as the games of Malech and the stories he still read her.

He was more comfortable asking questions now.

“Help you come, you mean?” She shrugged.“Seems a pity not to let such a perfect cock get some use.”

He blushed and stammered, forgetting what he had wanted to ask for a few moments. Then he regained composure.“When we were children. You helped me escape.”

She hesitated longer before answering that question.“You were nice to me. Not many people in the palace were.”

She looked terribly embarrassed. Kasius reached out to squeezed her hand and then continued reading the book he’d picked for her as if there had been no interruption.

She scooted a little closer, dropping her head against the sofa so it was very almost on his shoulder.

* * *

Sinara grasped Kasius’ wrist, stopping his hand from moving any further between her legs.

He was about to start apologising when she said,“Would you mind if we didn’t do that?”

“That’s fine,”he said hurriedly.

Hopefully she could not hear the irrational hurt in his voice.

She could, he saw it in her eyes. For some reason, it made her smile.

She rolled him onto his back and straddled him.“I meant, would you like to do something else instead?” She rocked against him.“I’ve been aching to have your cock in me. My pussy’s wet just thinking about it.”

His hips jerked to meet her movements and he groaned.“Yes, please.”

She wasted no time on getting properly undressed, freeing his cock and pushing her panties to the side and slowly sinking down on him.

He grasped her hips to steady her, letting her work her way onto his cock at her own pace, now matter how much he wanted to thrust up into her.

She pulled his hands away from her hips to guide them to her tits instead, starting to ride his cock as he kneaded her tits and teased her nipples.

When they were both spent and she was collapsed on his chest, he gathered all his courage.

“May I kiss you?”he asked.

They had kissed many parts of each other’s bodies. They had yet to share a kiss on the mouth.

“I’d like that,”she said, and cupped his cheeks as he closed the distance between them. It was a slow kiss, just a brushing of lips at first, as if they were both afraid they might burst their bubble, then it grew into something more passionate, yet still tender.

Kasius pulled Sinara closer and smiled into their kiss.

She tasted like home.

He was finally done with running.

* * *

He got more to call home than Sinara, when they grew sick of the capital and the eyes on them, and retired to the countryside, with a little house to themselves.

And as much as he loved the painted door and always slightly overgrown garden, she would always be his home in all the ways that mattered most.


End file.
